


the writers are getting desperate and I love it

by Ler



Category: Mass Effect, Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Mass Effect AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 16:31:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4712762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ler/pseuds/Ler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which tired, semi-drunk but not that old Shepard and Garrus take on an abduction case for old time’s sake which turns into a relationship drama worth an elcor production, and features royals, ambassadors, royal ambassadors and bringing swords to a gunfight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the writers are getting desperate and I love it

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I take two things that I love an mash them together. Complete mess, that's what.  
> Against my better judgement, I decided to post this here. I do a lot of things against my better judgement.

**Act 1: The Girl**

“This is not what I had in mind,” says Garrus over a bottle of Oskan Green, the  _good_   _stuff_  (oh, her poor heart, he still has horrible taste in expensive alcohol), “when I was promised an evening out.”

Shepard decides against telling him that she knows this certain turian who promised her a retirement, and a beach house and maybe a few bloodthirsty but cute Krogan babies she could headbutt, but instead she is on the Citadel, again, in another seedy bar,  _again_ , and there is a  _butterfly person_  before her.

 _Faelite_ , she corrects herself. And maybe not before her, but slightly to the right, and down and sideways. Shepard did have a few drinks already. She was promised a retirement, but _somehow_ , they are doing the f-ing C-Sec work – and by “work” she means pretty much running the C-Sec (Garrus’ dad calls to tell them that he is very proud of him before Shepard picks up in her underwear and he remembers that Garrus married a human, even if that human is the Savior of the bloody Galaxy). They tell each other it’s the cool C-Sec now,  ~~with blackjack and hookers~~ , but they are both liars, so there is none of that, just reports and red tape (a lot less of red tape, since most of the Citadel is a mess of construction and debris, and they are Shepard and Vakarian, but even they are not enough take the boring out of it, not after you spend years traveling across the space, kicking ass and taking names and having battles where the fate of the Galaxy is as stake). And, of course, there is the question of people just approaching them, figuring it would work better than going to the C-Sec HQ and leaving an official report – it does, sometimes, when their mood is just right. Shepard doesn’t know yet if it’s the case right now.

This faelite is the third- no,  _fifth_  one they saw,  _ever_ , not counting the info-vids and the news bulletin, and the general uproar they caused (sentient races suddenly pop on the galactic radar, humans were the ones before and everyone knows what happened after that – but it’s a different time now, the war for the galaxy has ended and they are on their way rebuilding, not every day a race – actually  _two_  races, within one solar system, absolutely unheard of – manages to go as far as repairing their mass relay, so why not welcome their new interstellar friends with arms spread wide open, and see what resources they have to offer  ~~so maybe we can rob them blind because our economy is shit~~ ) – so Shepard tries not to stare, and steps on her partner’s leg if he would please stop digging his talons into the table. [He says is a bird thing. She calls him her weirdo.]

“So are you Commander Shepard or not?”

It’s the crossed arms that get her, Shepard thinks when she considers telling this girl – she is pretty sure it’s a girl, her eye shadow game is too strong – to fuck off, but the huge purple angry fluttering  _things_  behind the narrow set of the faelite’s shoulders that scream of distress and 0.5 of Oskan Green slowly killing her liver tip the Hero of the Citadel into saying “What’s it to you?” knowing exactly what she is going to hear in return (and cursing her natural curiosity and her turian husband, who is too busy being a stupid bird and enabling her).

“I need your help.”

And there it is. To her right, Garrus groans and foreheads the table.

“Shepard, no,” he tells the cheap plastic, but his prayers fall short. They’ve stayed in this conversation for too long, so the other patrons are starting to show their interest, and for once, they are looking not just at the drunken couple that is the first human specter and her turian sidekick (and that makes that human specter just a little bit uneasy).

“Shepard, yes.” It’s a miracle it works, but the barstool hooked with a foot from nearby table makes its way to them without a hitch. “Butterfly person, sit down. What’s your name?”

The butterfly person might not be happy to be called so, but she shows it only by clenching her jaw, folding her things behind her and sitting her ass down in front of a bottle with the joke someone called wine.

“Marianne,” she says, and looks very human, disregarding her slightly shorter stature, and slightly bigger head, and huge brown eyes. Oh, and pointy ears, shouldn’t forget that. Now that Shepard signs up for whatever this alien creature is about to add to her evening, she starts to notice things, like the classical dress of the Citadel inhabitant, that is augmented where needed, fitted, modified and very well crafted in general (which is strange, who would want to cater to the species that are so new on the block no one knows what to expect?), but slightly battered, like there’s a small rip-tear on her left side, and a red bite-bruise peaking over her collar, and how wrinkled her skirt is – was she assaulted? She didn’t look like someone who was assaulted.

“And what sort of help do you need, Marianne?”

The girl gives off a feeling of sheer uncomfortableness (is that a word?), a polite yet stern smile on her pretty face, while her eyes dart around the bar, mostly a turian establishment, but you got all kinds, with curiosity and tiny bit of fear and  _interest_ , her fingers busy with the hems of her sleeves and the edge of the table, and was she  _humming_  to herself-

“I know you,” Garrus decides to join in, perhaps after realizing that this is a bloody  _faelite_  with goddamn  _wings_  (fine, they are wings, but who even has those these days, aren’t they something evolutionarily cool races dropped somewhere around the prehistoric stages of their development?) and they are helping her because Shepard said so. “ _Your Royal Highness_.”

Or that. Even though he could have said it with far less sarcasm.

The faelite drops in the face. She folds her hands before her on the table and straightens her back – the table is still too high for her, so she looks even funnier and out of place, and, if Shepard may say so, almost childlike.

“Are you a  _queen_?” Shepard blurs out, and it’s only a degree better than to laugh at somebody who is probably a ruler. “Garrus, I thought you were joking when you said that faelites have monarchy.”

The girl’s wings fan out, and they seriously big, people have to walk around their table in a wide circle – but hey, that’s a good thing. “I’m an  _Ambassador_.”

“Shepard, do you even  _watch_  the holos?”

It’s a rhetorical question. She doesn’t. These days she falls asleep half-way through most of them, and Garrus, good old Garrus with his tired sighs and endless patience when it comes to her, lies at the couch as she snores by his side, and watches the damn infomercials and news bulletins, remembers names and faces and ranks, and makes sure they do not start an interplanetary diplomatic conflict. “She is a Princess.”

It’s like something out of a drama. Garrus loves the dramas. They both do. Comes with age. “That’s what I have you for. You do love those info-vids-“

“My sister has gone missing.”

That stops them from screwing around. Well, almost.

“Do you owe anyone money?”

Marianne responds with a look like they just asked her, if she liked batarian slavers. Garrus chuckles, his mandibles flaring.

“Fair enough,” he pours himself another drink, the leftover of the wine splashing over the rim of his glass and on the table. Might as well, it’s not like anyone else was going to drink it. “Then tell us, when did it happen, what were you going at the time, and how did you find out about your sister’s absence.”

And so starts the tale of Marianne, the princess of the Faelites, who was send by her father, the actual monarch of this one-planet race, as the representative on the Citadel, and how her sister managed to tag along. And to sneak her best friend with her. (They really need to do something about port control.) And how Marianne’s meeting with the Council was postponed till next week (Shepard can only guess the reason for that, but she is pretty sure they haven’t fixed the windows in the Council Chamber yet, and you can’t rule the Galaxy without windows, no sir), so she had to stay in their Embassy for the past three days. And how she had a previous engagement for this particular evening (the “previous engagement” stood for a hot date, if Shepard still remembered how to read young girls who blushed all the way to the tips of their  _huge and pointy_  ears), which ended recently, and was followed by a few revelations, like a) the younger sister sneaking out of the Embassy to snoop around the Citadel, b) the friend being pulled along, c) the younger sister being dragged off somewhere in the Lower Wards by a bunch of men who didn’t look like they were joking, d) the friend somehow getting back to the embassy to tell all about their adventures to an older sister, who was now sitting before them with determinately pressed lips. Additional details included: the head of the embassy’s security dragging the friend off to find the evil-doers, but they should not count on him, because the man is a moron; Marianne going to C-Sec and being asked to come back in the morning (and being pointed to their favorite crappy and cheap bar where she could possibly find the Chief Executors on their time off because she asked politely,  _goddamn it Miles, she will have a talk with that stupid turian_ ); Marianne asking if she is allowed to use her weapon on the Citadel grounds (she asked very politely, again, but her face said that she would do so no matter their opinion on the subject).

But there was something that did bother both of them, Garrus’ frown a clear indication to that.

“So what do you want from  _us_?” There were days, back in the beginning, when they could clean up an organ dealer ring, just the two of them. Those days were gone. “It sounds like an official political matter, kid, and we need to mobilize a team to swipe the lower levels, and-“

The princess lets her shoulders slump, the silk of her wings (Shepard just can’t stop bloody looking at them, they are great, but can’t possibly be usefull, but also still are great and so pretty) handing down her back like an expensive glimmering cloak.

“ _I love my sister_ ,” she says, and oh no, this girl knows where to hit with those puppy eyes and messy hair and family issues, it’s like a déjà vu, with Miranda all over, proud and beautiful and so independent, with snide remarks, and perfect worried eyebrows. “And they say you two are the best there is.”

Vakarian drowns the rest of his drink. He doesn’t even have to look at Shepard to know what she is thinking.

“ _Fine_ ,” he stands up and slams the glass against the table. “But there better be no explosions.”

The ambassador-princess happily flaps her wings, mouth spreading into a relieved smile.

“Let us get our guns. This was supposed to be a gun-free evening.”

Shepard kisses his rough scaly cheek. Marianne blushes. Garrus grumbles about going soft, and being too old for that, and this is what he is missing his holo-dramas for.

 

**Act 2: The Boy(s)**

The Warp. They went to the Warp.

Shepard wants to know how two kids even got in there, but Garrus growls and it probably means that someone was waiting for them, which means that this was a foul kind of play, and a foul play is certainly a political matter (and it has to do with checking the embassy’s workers, at point blank if needed, and cross-investigate, and that would take all the time they don’t have). But he keeps it to himself and Shepard is grateful, as they push pass the security – who knows them, every single one knows them and it’s both a blessing and a curse, because everyone knows they are going to start asking questions and maybe they would have some answers ready, just not the kind Shepard needs.

What she does not expect is a thing that Shepard mistakes for a turian (and she should be ashamed, she’s been living with one for years) standing in the middle of a club with a freaking huge carved wooden stick in his hands and a bunch of people (human, turian, asari, even a  _krogan_ ) lying in an unconscious circle around him.  There are smoking black holes in the walls.

“I’m going to ask again,” says the thing, and the translator in Shepard’s head decides that yes, a rumbling Scottish is an appropriate accent for the occasion. “About a wee girlie fairy. And I expect answers.”

The owner of the club, a volus, round and short like all the other, with too much cheek and too little guts, maneuvers through the crowd, and Shepard is ready for the drill of being called the “cavalry” and how “about fucking time that they arrived”, but the faelite behind her back, a tiny princess with straw hands, shoves her away and shouts from the top of her lungs.

“ _YOU_.”

And then she is lifting up her skirt, and the whole club is staring at her as she pulls an f-ing _sword_  from under her long skirt, and unsheathes it, the metal reflecting all the white and neon lights into a handful of bunnies across the wall and the floor and the ceiling and the tall-ass creature, that stops snarling and stares at her.

Now this is when experience takes the front seat. If it wasn’t there, what would have happened is that Garrus would put his hand on the girl’s shoulder to stop her from advancing, and the rest of the evening would have ended very differently. But as Garrus raises his hand, so does Shepard, and the purple edges caress her arm.

The ambassador  _flies_. She flies and swings her sword – Lord Almighty, she has a real f-ing _sword_  of all things - and the creature, originally almost chastised by her outburst of anger, parries, stepping on the chairs and tables and also  _flies_.

“Uh, Garrus,” Shepard studies the acrobatic performance which puts the usual events of this club to shame (including the asari strippers and the shoot-out they had just two months ago right in that corner over there – the Warp is that sort of a place, with weird things happening all the time, but this officially takes the price.) “What the hell is going on? Why is everyone suddenly flying?” She points to the creature that is now busy circling the chandelier with the look of somebody having a damn good time. “And what is that?”

“That is a coblyn,” but he is not glad to announce that.

The volus, hands clasping his head in usual, almost rehearsed, dismay, distracts them.

“Are you just going to stand there? They are ruining my club!”

“Sumir, our hands are tied,” Shepard cocks her gun. This might be amusing, but he does have a point. And they don’t possess the resources to pay for the damages,  _this time_. “The girl has diplomatic immunity-”

But her turian is faster. “They both have diplomatic immunity,” he takes the safety off and shoots the ceiling.

That produces the required effect. The ambassador and her opponent land on the floor, followed by the lamp that they cut down, still at each other’s throats, but panting and satisfied and…grinning darkly at each other like this was not a sparring session at all.

There had to be some explanation to all of this.

“What do you mean “both”? Do you know this… man-person-thing, Ambassador?”

Something snaps. The Princess stops pointing her sword at the guy with wings (again with those, what the hell) twice her size and three times as scary, purses her lips and looks away like she completely forgot where she was, and the guy, with a single act of straightening his back and cracking his neck and shoulders, turns from a snarling beast to a person, given still scaly and tall as hell, who could possibly be someone with a hypothetic diplomatic immunity.

Garrus once again proves that he knows  _everything_. “He is the Ambassador from that  _other_ race.”

“Oh, that  _other_  race.” The one faelites have been warring (since the moment two races discovered each other couple of centuries back – had something to do with a welcoming committee being eaten, cause whoever heard of the new species protocol) with a surprising tenacity for such delicate beautiful things. “Well, alright. But what is he doing at our crime scene?”

The coblyn  _clears his throat_. It’s such a surprising gesture, especially after he was growling and cackling, and Shepard is so distracted by it, she almost misses when he starts talking,

“I was being  _neighborly_ ,” and Shepard wants to murder someone, aka  _him_ , because he has this politically correct smile on his crazy weird pointy face and the pair of blues and Shepard used to shoot people in the face for less smugness but she is also a sucker for tall dudes with exoskeleton who think they are all that (example one: her husband).

Shepard points at the people chilling on the floor, but thankfully all not dead, groaning and fighting gravity.

“I  _might_  have gotten carried away,” he adds.

A tip of a sword rises under his chin, and presses against the edge of his jaw. “If I find out that  _you_  kidnapped my sister, I’ll cut your head off and send it to your father  _as a gift_ , Bog.”

“Bog  _King_ ,” he hisses, but the dirty look he shoots the winded girl raises so many flags it’s like a Remembrance Day parade.

The crowd around them starts to disperse, music picking up and the sound of mixing drinks clacking away as a quiet reminder of ticking time. Garrus is not amused.

“We haven’t even started this investigation and it’s already going nowhere.” The unlucky volus is not smart enough to get away from them as fast as possible. “Sumir, what is it that we hear about a little girl being kidnapped in your club?”

“What girl? No girls here.”

The sword cuts the air and knocks against the mask of his protective suit. Shepard has to bite her cheek to keeps her poker face, but the faelite ambassador is steadily crashing the way into her heart with a thick “blond hair, my height, pink wings”. And as an afterthought, “Hugs people a lot.”

“Yes, Sumir, it’s a girl with wings, how hard is that.”

“There  _might_  have been one of the fae-clan. Really friendly,” he leans away from the sword, minding its sharp edge. “Ordered a few drinks, talked with a few people. Wasn’t paying much attention to her.”

The Princess eyebrows fly so high they are in danger of becoming part of her hairline. “She DRANK?”

“This is a  _business_. I can’t risk loosing any more customers.  _More than I already do_.” Sumir purposefully looked Garrus in his vizor-free eye.

“But have you seen her leave?”

“I would have already told you if I did.”  He set his short plump arms on his hips. “Now excuse me, Executors, I need to get back to keeping this club afloat.” Sumir wobbles away, or starts to, before making a half-sway back. “I’ll send you the repair bill tomorrow.”

Oh, Garrus is not happy, he lets her know. “The council will ask so many questions.”

The faelite drops the hand with her sword and rubs her face. The girl looks exhausted and upset. Bog King tries very hard not to show that he is concerned.

“So what do we do now?”

“You do nothing, except sitting down and not damaging any more property.”

And it’s good. The coblyn rolls his eyes. The faelite groans. Shepard tries not shine with glee like a moron who likes cheep drama.

“I guess we’ll talk to the bartender. If the girl was drinking he had to remember at least something,” she point at the circle of the bar where a turian barkeep is trying very hard not to look at them.

‘Yes, good luck with that.” Oh, she knows that tone. And the pouty expression, which she tends to experience a lot for a woman with a man, who has no actual lips to speak of.

Shepard does one thing she knows to do in cases like these: grabs Garrus by his pointy elbow, and drag him away behind the nearest fake plant with a very for official-purposes-only grin and “excuse us for a second”.

Her husband doesn’t oppose being dragged. He plays with his omni-tool.

“Tell me you want to go back home and watch horrible dramas, please.”

“Garrus, focus. I think we have one right here. ”

“Yeah, but let’s look at this like this might be a real abduction case, and realize that no one, _no one_  is going to tell us anything. Not with those two about,” He rubs off on her. Or she rubs off on him, but the expression on the turian’s face is of the suffering and exasperation and she is this close to punching him. “Unless someone comes here and straight up tells us that yes, they know who did it, we are not going too far.”

Behind her back, the representatives of the two races, allegedly with extreme animosity towards each other, keep throwing snarky remarks back and forth. She turns this face towards them.

“Garrus, look at them, you can’t take this away from me,” like on queue, the flying aliens decide to pick it up a notch and get very upclose and personal about their Banter. “This is so much better than watching Thane’s kid and Miranda’s sister pretend they do not make out in the utility closet.”

Being married has its perks. Garrus’ laugh is a low grumbling thing with trembling mandibles, but it’s her personal one, a husband laugh, which makes it the best. “It is pretty funny though.”

“They could be…  _the star-crossed lovers_ ,” she does the jazz hands and all. “Cockroach Romeo and butterfly Juliet from the outer spa-“

The doors slam open. The rest of her sentence is drowned in a musical number, with singing and dancing. It goes something like this:

As already mentioned, the doors of the club slam open. There is another faelite there, a male one, and he sees Marianne, and swipes his hair, and starts with a

“Marianne, you are here too?! I have wonderful news, buttercup, I think I know where your sister is!”

Does the music change? Is that the DJ fucking about? Shepard doesn’t know. What she knows, is that the newcomer is singing how “he could be her hero, baby” and the aforementioned baby, aka the princess, has a face that says  _murder_ , and her scaly not-boyfriend chirps angrily but steps away, casually, and impressively, blending into shadows. She got to admit, the man has skills.  

“And you were worried,” Shepard points to the newcomer, all blond hair and creepy smile, and wow, he sure is friendly with his royal boss. “Let me guess, that’s the head of the security?”

Garrus drags them out of the bush and towards the diplomatic pair. “Yeah. Met him once, when we were supervising the set up of the set up of the embassy.”

“Your opinion?”

“Self-centered prick.”

“Well, contrary to previous assumption, there is some use to him. Found our missing girl. Five credits say he done did it.”

“It’s not a bet if we both think so.”

But the princess doesn’t look happy at all. The grip she has on her sword tightens, as the man flies a circle around her, orange wings flapping furiously to the song he tries to sing through the beat that doesn’t really work with it.

“Roland, stop your fidgeting and tell me where she is.” Her own wings do a small flutter. “Where is Sunny?”

The Roland person lands on the floor, grabbing her royal hand and planting a fat smooch on it.

“Dropped him off at the embassy. Can have him get in my way.”

Sheppard decides to intervene before Garrus can stop her.

“Who else you don’t want to get in your way, pray tell?”

The man turn to her like he just noticed she existed. The grin slips off his face with an alarming but quite telling speed. Good.

“What my partner was meant to say,” her turian decides to be the proper cop in their duo. “We suggest you to share your finding with us.  _If you’d be so kind_.”

Roland – last name unknown – turns his head to his liege so fast, Shepard is surprised it haven’t fallen off. “You went to the C-Sec?!”

The princess forcefully rips her hand out his grip. Her lips pull in a curt little smile that Shepard is already starting to admire. “But  _of course_ , Roland. After all, they are the official policing body on the Citadel. If anyone can find Dawn, it’s them.”

“And this is now the official C-Sec investigation.” If it’s not mirth in Garrus’ voice, she doesn’t know what is. “Now, for that information.”

The Faelite resumes a look of a man who is running out of options, fast. “All I know is that a group of men were seen fleeing to the lower wards with what looked like one of our people.”

“Seen by who?”

“People.”

“What people?”

No, this won’t do at all. The guy is already starting to lock up, hands drawn before him, and it’s not that she doubts Garrus’ interrogation skills – it’s just that he is already thrown off enough for what she has in mind. She does not need for him to lie himself in the corner. She needs for him to  _flee_.

“Now, now,” Shepard stands forward, throwing her arm over the man’s shoulders with a couple of supportive taps. Never before she’d been gladder of her own short stature. “We believe you.”

“Why didn’t you follow?!” Marianne starts to look like she is about to loose it.  

“Had to share the news, didn’t I? Nothing brings me more joy than your smiling face.”

Yes, he definitely had to leave  _now_. God Bless Garrus, and his fake note-taking. Marianne opens her mouth to say something, probably very explicit, but he stops her with a raised hand and a smirk, as he presses away on his omni-tool. If she had her guess, it’s solitaire.

“Alright, well, thank you for your cooperation. Now please, go back to your assigned area of responsibly. Fight the good fight, et cetera.” Shepard pulls the male faelite away, towards the still opened doors, before the princess has time to go into another hack-n-slash mood. “I’m sure we’ll find your compatriot in no time.”

Shepard fights an urge to give him a kick, for speed and acceleration, but her willpower wins over it. She simply pushes him outside, fully aware of how strange that might look, not that she cares. The man throws her a very confused glace, but upon seeing her patented “bugger off” cringe, nods and strides away, fixing his expensive clothing.

Shepard turns around, and stands there for a moment, admiring Garrus in his attempts to pacify now fuming princess and her company, that finally decided to stop pretending he is a part of the scenery. She marches back to his aid, the screen of her omni-tool popping up.

“Why did you let him go?!” Marianne is a loud one, but that’s no surprise. “We could have at least showed us where to start looking!”

“Oh, he will. In fact, he will lead us right to her.” Shepard twists her arms to point at the small popping dot.

Both of the ambassadors stare at her.

Garrus gets it, but shakes him. “And now we have appropriation of police resources to boot.”

“Oh, hush you, we had to start using these things at some poi-“

“What do you mean, “lead us to her”?” Marianne, sweet girl, also opens up on her rude side. “Roland is too cowardly to actually do something. He is showy, and tends to flaunt his bravado, but he will not risk his life to actually go and rescue-“

But Shepard stops her. “I didn’t say that he is going to save her. After all,” she nudges Garrus and nods towards the exit. “You did say that he was a moron, and he proved himself to be one by coming here.” She turns to walk out. “Come. On our way you can explain what’s the story with this guy and why he is that keen to get in your good graces that he would kidnap your sister.”

The princess stares at Shepard’s back, still as a stone, mouth agape, but then shuts it with a loud clack of her teeth. She pushes forward, making a first decisive step on her way to fiery vengeance when the coblyn catches her empty hand. He says something to her, all the previous quarrelling forgotten, because the way he holds her, and the expression he wears is nothing but gentle and concerned.  Shepard can’t hear them, she already walked too far away, falling in step with her husband.

“Look at that. Far better than dramas, innit?”

Garrus shrugs. “Whatever you say. I just hope he won’t tag along.”

Shepard gives then one more look. Judging by the way the girl trots forward, her shoulders hunched and ears blushing, and the silent yet graciously content smile her companion parades, he definitely is.

Two dates in a row. Lucky girl.

 

**Intermission: Shepard gives shitty advice**

This is the thing about lower levels: it’s a bloody labyrinth down here. There were times, in the very beginning, when Shepard wondered about why Citadel, the center, both political and economic, of the galaxy, had a criminal problem. It seemed so easy back then: you just had to clean up the lower wards and your problems were gone! She asked Garrus about, way back, when all he seemed to be interested in was fixing Mako and shooting things (and not being too sociable with her). Shepard clearly remembers the look he gave her, the one she now associates with pure sass, when he repeated: “Just.”

Oh, how wrong she was.

Lower Wards are now a clusterfuck of destruction and construction work and all the routes she knows are wrong (that’s what you get for being the Big Boss, you start to suck in the field and it’s embarrassing). Garrus has the plan of the Wards on his omni-tool, but it’s not helping at all – they already found three dead ends, fifteen nooks, and five hundred bazillion crannies. Curses start to find their way into his speech with increased regularity.

The man they are tracking is down there alright, but he turned out to be way more familiar with the layout of the place than they are, previously so confident in navigating the wards with their eyes closed, but now stumbling in the most cringe-worthy fit of unprofessional behavior ever.

One good thing comes of it: they get to hear the prequel to the tale of Marianne, the story of Marianne, a faelite girl who was young and stupid and fell in love with a wrong man. It’s not a happy story, with cancelled weddings and broken hearts and cheating, and a father who can’t seem to get a clue – Shepard never realized how difficult it would be to be royalty, or an heir to the crown to a whole race, she has enough on her plate as it is. But the heir seems well-off now, that with a coblyn prince – Shepard makes a mental note, is everyone around her a bloody monarch, when did that happen - at her side dropping their pretense at being diplomatically civil and supportively clenching her shoulder, but quickly pulling away when she gratefully brushes her hand over his.

Best non-elcor drama ever.

And on that note, they encounter another flipping T-junction.

“Okay, that’s it,” Garrus closes the map a smudge too forcefully. “We’ll do this the old way.”

“I take right, you go left? Com me if you figure the way out of this wrecked shithole?”

Turian pulls out his gun and switches off the safety. “Now I remember why I married you.”

“I love you too, dear.” But she does so too, grabbing the girl by her elbow and pulling her down the length of the corridor, deaf to the silly little noises both her and her not-too-secret admirer make. “You’re coming with me, Princess.”

And for about ten minutes they just walk. It’s not the most entertaining of walks, that with walls and crates and fuck all else, but the faelite fumbles, and keeps throwing her curious little looks, so it’s just a matter of time before she opens her mouth and blurs out words in the most socially-awkward non-royal way possible.

“So… you two are married.”

Somehow Shepard knows that it’s going to be just that. “That we are.”

They walk a few more feet forward, while Shepard wonders how a girl with a sword on her shoulder can be timid.

“I read the history books,” the princess continues. “Not much to do when you’re stuck in four walls all day. There’s a lot of information. About the different races, and the wars…”

“Just say what you want to say already.”

Politeness and curiosity battle silently within her, but finally, the faelite breaks. “Is that not a problem that you two are…”

She waves her hand a bit, looking for a word. Shepard takes pity.

“Together? Sometimes. But we learned to live with it.”

“Then how-“

They stop. Shepard feels like she knows what this is about, because really, only a blind person can’t make connections, and she is as far from blind as a sniper can be.

“Listen, kid. I could write a book called “How everyone looked at me with disapproval and told me not to do the thing and how I showed them in the same direction the Reapers went.” And that is true. Even if she had to color a few faces black’n’blue to do that. “If you want an advice, then have this: before you decide to have an interracial scandal, consider if you enjoy your relationship because you have feelings for this man, or because your daddy tells you that you can’t.”

The girl puffs her cheeks.

“I am not a child,” Marianne notifies her. “I used to be engaged.”

“And I used to be dead, twice, but got better. We all used to be something. Here is the gist of it: you wanna keep this man? Fight for him, even if you have fight the whole world. Don’t go sleeping with him and then pretending that you don’t.”

Faelites blush the funniest freaking way, first cheeks, then boom! The whole flipping face and ears and even neck are hanar-pink.

“I do not-” She starts, but Shepard simply taps the side of her neck, mirroring the still present bite-bruise.

“As I was saying: DON’T. Believe me when I tell you nothing good ever comes of that.”

Marianne does a half-turn and looks back with almost palpable guilty longing; Shepard starts to feel sorry for her.

“He seems like an… okay guy? Not that I have a clue about what coblyns are like.”

She walks again, when the com in her ear starts rasping with a nice familiar baritone. “Shepard, we found him. But it looks like he is in some nasty company.”

“Roger that,” her omni-tool bleeps with directions. Ah, what would she do without him.

She punches the girl slack shoulder. “Quit your sulking. Looks like your ex found himself some friends that did not share his sentiment.”

A pair of brown-amber eyes look up at her, worry buried deep into them. “Is Dawn with him? Is she alright?”

“Don’t know. We’ll have to find out for ourselves.”  

The sword drops from the narrow shoulder, and makes a controlled half-swing. It’s still bloody sword, but Shepard has to give her credit, she is proficient with it. Not that it will do her any good.

“Race you,” and she starts back gown the corridor, and chuckles over the sound of furiously flapping wings behind her back.

 

**Act 3: The Explosions**

“Would you look at that,” Garrus hunches behind the crate and hums, an amused little sound. “Seems like the idiot hired the wrong kind of people to do a wrong kind of job.”

Indeed he did, because for the past fifteen minutes he’s been arguing, very loudly, with a couple of vorcha – at least they are not batarians, or worse,  _humans_ , don’t need that race thing hanging over her head – who continued to argue back.

“A deal gone haywire by the looks of it,” Shepard glances at her gun. The charge looks full. “Which one: right or left?”

“Right one looks smarter. But just barely.”

“Then left one it is.” The decrepit hangar is probably the worst place one could have a hostage situation at. A lot of open space, plenty of cover, and a few good vantage points if one knew where to look. But what does she want, it’s vorcha. The blond wonder is not just stupid, he is also cheap. Problem is, if there is one vorcha, there has to be at least ten more nearby. “Tell me, Marianne, how much do you value the life of that guy over there?”

“Not at all,” growls the girl from behind another, bigger crate. “But I prefer for you not to kill him. The pleasure should be all mine.”

“No promises,” Shepard pulls over the top of the crate, hand steady.

Her finger prods the trigger, when another group appears, one of them carrying a small buckling creature, blond hair, pink-yellow wings, and hair even fluffier than Marianne’s. They dump her on one of the crates, and she immediately wiggles herself into an upright position, despite her hands being tied.

“You are so not hospitable,” she tells everyone present, loudly. “And- Oh, hi, Roland.”

“Dawn!” Shepard is pretty sure the princess would have already been halfway through the hangar if not for the pair of arms holding her back, despite her opinion on the matter. “Let me go, I need to help her.”

“Marianne, they have guns,” hisses the Bog King.

“And I have a sword,” she groans back, but turns down her wiggling.

“Would you two stay quiet?” Garrus hushes at them. “I’m trying to assess the situation.”

It doesn’t look good for Mr Blond-and-Obnoxious. The new arrivals crowd upon him, bared teeth, while he raises his hands in an appeasing manner, trying to negotiate with them.

And then there is another thing, a small shape the size of a small volus, that scoots from crate to crate, avoiding everyone’s attention.

“What the hell is that?”

Marianne peaks over the side of her hideout. “That’s… Sunny?”

“That does not look like a faelite, Marianne.” Shepard continues to track the creature’s movement. He is quick, discreet and coming around of a really wide circle.

“He is not… like us. An elf. But what is he doing here?”

“Great. More things I don’t know about.” Shepard slips back behind her cover, hand rubbing her face. “Probably the exactly same thing we are: trying to save your sister. My question is how did he get here?”

The princess shrugs. “He is good at finding things.”

“Then maybe we should have taken him with us,” Garrus states incredulously. “Since he knows what he is doing.”

He does. Slipping behind the crowd, still very preoccupied with Roland, the elf – it like a freaking bedtime story in here – fumbles with the ties on the younger sister’s hands, and pretty much pulls her back the way he came.

“Well, this worked out better than originally planned,” Shepard concludes while her husband releases a small moan. “And no explosions, aren’t you happy?”

At this moment, Marianne steps from behind her crate, pulls the gun out of Shepard’s hand and with the words “I’m not leaving without this asshole’s corpse” shoots into the general direction of Roland and the vorcha.

Except that she misses, because shooting a gun is not as simple as that, and the round flies sideways into the stack of decommissioned fuel tanks.

And then there are explosions.

Whatever is left of the vorsha after the knockback is done with them scramble to their feet, and the gunfire begins, except Marianne is already in the air with a mighty roar, and Shepard’s pistol is thrown back in her lap, as she observes the whole thing with wide eyes.

In fact, she is too stunned to talk or move, since Garrus has to make sure she ducks them the rounds fly her way.

“No explosions?” he shouts over whatever is happening. “Did I hear you right? This didn’t look like No Explosions to me.”

Shepard wants to reply, but the noise of vibrating wings makes her look to her side as the only other winded person left. “Is she… always like this?” she asks the coblyn immerging from behind the cover. Not like there are bullets flying everywhere because vorcha never could learn to aim properly.

He looks down at her, hand gripping his wooden looking stick, with an enlightened grin, which doesn’t promise anything good. “ _Yes_ ,” and he is off, towards the fighting, staff a-twirling in his hands.

“This is the last time we agree to something like that,” Garrus notifies her, as they scramble to look over the crates at the makeshift battlefield, where Marianne chases her subject, strangely untouched, all around the hangar, sword swinging, and the other royal knocks the vorcha about like ragdolls with dull metallic whacks, masterfully dodging when they attempt to shoot at him.

“At least someone is having fun,” she replies when a couple of bodies fall beside them.

“Hi,” says one of them, blonde and blue-eyed, and very cheery. “I’m Dawn. Are you friends with my sister?”

They silently wave at her. The other body fixes the cap that has fallen over his eyes, trying to catch his breath.

“Near-death experience, Dawn. We talked about this.”

Shepard still doesn’t say a thing. She takes her turian’s hand.

“I’m ready to take you up on that proposal to go home and watch the dramas.” He squeezes it and she corrects herself. “No, no dramas for today.”

“Had enough?” He is less angry and more amused. Perhaps he forgot that they would need to write a report about this.

“I think I had enough for a while.” She looks back over her shoulder. Marianne finally catches up to her victim, sucker punching him into the wall. Judging by the pile of unconscious bodies, the other one is done as well. “I feel like the writers jumped a shark on this one.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying,” but he stands up, pulling her with him. “I was just starting to get into it.”

Shepard punches him on the shoulder. He doesn’t even twitch, jackass.

 

**Epilogue: And all is well**

“We can keep him for you, if you want.”

They are standing before the entrance to the faelite embassy. In a way, it’s unique. Done by the native technology, similar to the one their next-door neighbors the coblyn possess, it’s all very organic, with tree-like textures. Such a strange sight amongst the glass and metal of the rest of the Citadel.

“It’s alright,” the older princess, her dress tattered and a bit singed, smiles brightly at them. “We have holding cells.”

“You do?” Shepard raises her eyebrows, but the girl winks at her.

“Maybe we do. Maybe we don’t.” Her arms cross over her chest. “Treason is the interior affair of the kingdom.”

Her not-boyfriend stands by her side, Roland’s unconscious body thrown over his huge shoulder. Shepard points at him. The princess shrugs.

“He is just being neighborly.”

Garrus nudges her, his eyebrows heavy as he points at the time on his omni-tool.

“Would you look at that,” she raises her hands. “Don’t know about you, but I need sleep. And to finally have you two out of my hair.”

Marianne grins. They shake hands.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Commander Shepard.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.” She nods as they pull away. “Just don’t go trying to shoot things again. Not your thing.”

As they part to go their separate ways, Shepard turns one last time.

“And do come by soon, you’ll need to sign your witness statement.”

The girl waves at her in affirmation from the steps of her home. Her eyes shift away from the Executors and towards her companion. The next moment a groaning body falls on the floor because she propels herself up with a push of her wings and kisses him.

Silly children.

“Well, that looks like a diplomatic scandal in making,” Vakarian puts her hand over his elbow. “Your doing?”

“I think they’ll be just fine,” she replies and pulls him home. “Couples that fight together stay together.”

“Only in cheap dramas.” But he laughs.

After all, those are the best kind.

 

**FIN**


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